A Storm of Strawberries

March 1, 2019

Gr 4-6-Twelve-year-old Darby, who has Down Syndrome, comes from a blended family whose strawberry farm is at risk because of a coming tornado. To complicate matters, her older sister Kaydee brings home a weekend guest, Lissa, who is not merely a friend, but a romantic partner. As the storm brings chaos outside, so do the mounting jealousies and misunderstandings within the family. When the romantic and sexual nature of the teenage girls' relationship is made plain to Darby's parents, the confrontation that follows gives Darby the opportunity to stand up for her sister and remind her family of the values of inclusivity and respect. Darby is, at times, deeply reflective and knowing. For example, she waxes poetic about her family situation, artfully invoking the metaphor of a kaleidoscope to describe the patterns of conversations around her. At other times, she is more naive or even confused by commonplace objects or concepts. When the stakes are highest-during and after a confrontation when Kaydee and Lissa are accidentally outed to her parents-the narrative gets muddied by inconsistent behavior on the part of the parents. There are other small problems with the narrative, such as the passing mention that their brother Olly is allergic to strawberries, which is never revisited. The strawberry farm workers, many of whom are immigrants, are undeveloped characters. VERDICT It is rare to see a middle grade novel starring a protagonist with Down Syndrome; libraries in need of narratives centering people with disabilities may want to seek this out. The inconsistencies and plot holes, however, make this a secondary purchase for most collections.-Lisa Lehmuller, Paul Cuffee Maritime Charter School, Providence

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2019
A 12-year-old English girl with Down syndrome copes with drama in her tightknit family over a stormy Easter.Darby loves her mother and her stepbrother, Olly, and her stepdad. She loves the strawberry farm where she lives. She loves music and paint by numbers. But more than anything else, she adores her 16-year-old sister, Kaydee. Darby's jealous of her sister's attention, so she is anything but pleased when Kaydee's best friend, Lissa, comes for the weekend. At least this weekend will feature one of Darby's favorite events, when she and her family find chocolate eggs in the yard. But with high winds spawning tornadoes and threatening their greenhouses, her parents are distracted and miserable. When Darby sees Kaydee and Lissa kissing and then tells Olly what she's seen, he gets weird. Darby's point of view as a cognitively disabled protagonist is a welcome one, though the execution is flawed; in one scene she describes dialogue she explicitly tells readers she was unable to hear. Moreover, though Darby's a whole and interesting person, by the conclusion she's been diminished to a tired trope of Down syndrome innocence, healing all wounds through pure insights about love. "Oh, Darby....What would we do without you, eh?" her dad asks whenever the childlike innocence of her Down syndrome causes a shift in his perspective.Well-meaning, but for a more genuine cognitively disabled protagonist, pair with Sharon Flake's Pinned (2012). (Fiction. 9-12)

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February 1, 2019
Grades 4-7 Twelve-year-old Darby can't wait for her family's annual chocolate hunt. Unfortunately, a freak tornado has struck a greenhouse on her family's strawberry farm in the British countryside, causing a power outage and jeopardizing the hunt. What's on Darby's mind more than anything?beside chocolate?is her fear of losing her big sister Kaydee to her friend Lissa. But when Darby catches Kaydee and Lissa kissing and unintentionally spills the beans to the rest of her family, she causes a storm of another sort. Given the paucity of middle-grade novels featuring a protagonist with Down syndrome, this book certainly fills a gap. However, flashbacks clumsily inserted in the middle of the chapters can make for a disjointed reading experience. American readers familiar with the devastation tornadoes wreak on this side of the pond may be confused by the relative insignificance of the tornado in this book?tornadoes in England tend to be small. Still, Darby is a complex and bighearted narrator, and this slice-of-life story is a balm for troubled times.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)